


the eldest pushed the youngest in

by AlysanneBlackwood



Category: Ghost Quartet - Malloy
Genre: And "The Bonny Swans" by Loreena McKennitt, F/M, Gen, I REGRET NOTHING, I have an unhealthy obsession with "The Twa Sisters" can you tell
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-06
Updated: 2018-09-06
Packaged: 2019-07-07 21:15:24
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,046
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15916395
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AlysanneBlackwood/pseuds/AlysanneBlackwood
Summary: Before she drowns, Pearl saves herself.





	the eldest pushed the youngest in

**Author's Note:**

> A friend (@futurenatasha on Twitter) and I were talking about the English ballad "The Twa Sisters" and its many variations, one of which is "The Wind and Rain" from Ghost Quartet. In most versions of the story, the eldest pushes the youngest in the river, not the other way around as it is in Ghost Quartet. My friend said she could only imagine it as Pearl pushing Rose in, and wondered why. I had some ideas about that, so here this is. Thanks to her for having that first thought. Go follow her on Twitter.

Rose had a mad gleam in her eyes.  Something dangerous and dark lurked in their brown depths.  Something that shook Pearl to her very bones. She knew that look.  She had seen it before, though she knew not where. All she knew was that it hearkened something dreadful to come.  She kept a watchful eye on Rose, noticing her newly begun habit of sitting at the window with a black look, bottle in hand, eyes towards the woods; how she never left the house anymore, when before she had spent the days roaming the seaside.  So when Rose began wandering off into the woods for hours at a time each day, Pearl took note, and decided to follow her. Mayhaps she was knocking at the astronomer’s door, screaming and cursing him from outside. Pearl loved her astronomer, but he was possessed of a quick temper, and she did not wish her sister killed by a long fall from a tree.  So she followed her into the forest, taking off many feet behind her so as not to be seen.

At last she saw Rose enter a great cave, and hid behind a bush, watching the cave.  It must have been deep, for she could hear nor see nothing happening inside. At last, Rose emerged, and went back towards the little house by the sea.

Rising, Pearl brushed the dirt from her skirts and peered inside the cave.  She saw nothing dangerous, and went in.

It was a deep cave, as she had suspected, and at the end was a great bear, his head resting on his paws.  He heard her coming, and looked up.

“Hello!” he said, quite pleasantly, though there was a cunning air about him.  “What do you wish of me?”

“Only to know what the girl who visited you before wished,” Pearl replied.  “She’s my sister. I’m afraid she’s asked something terrible of you, my…” She realized she had no way to address him.  “My lord,” she finished, looking at the ground.

“That she has, my lady,” said the bear, amused at the title.  “She wishes that I maim your love. The man who looks at the stars, yes?”

“Yes, my lord.”

“She has ordered me to maul him till he is dead, and turn you from girl to crow.  Then I must put you both in a cave and trap you there. You will begin to starve, and be forced to peck out his eyes and eat them.  That is what your sister wishes of me.”

Pearl felt as though the ground had been knocked from beneath her.  She had known something horrible would happen, but for Rose to kill her own _sister._ Pearl, who had looked after her for years after their mother died, who had taught her to gather salt and fish the river.  And all for a man. A man, whom she might not even be in love with by the next full moon. She expected to weep, but no tears came, only the grim knowledge of what must be done if she wanted to live.  There was no other way of saving herself and her astronomer from Rose’s hatred.

“I will not harm you yet,” the bear said.  “I have given her a journey to set out on first.  She must bring me four things before I do what I promised her, and it will take a very long time to find them.  I am hoping that she will grow tired of the quest and learn that rash vengefulness will get her nowhere.”

“I do not think she will learn,” Pearl said.  “She has always been quick to anger, and this time is worse than the others.”

“Well then,” said the bear resignedly, “do what you must to keep yourself and your love safe.”  And with those words, he put his head back upon his paws and closed his eyes.

Pearl left the cave, a pit forming in her belly.  Rose could not live. Not if Pearl lived. She must kill Rose first, before Rose consigned her and her astronomer to a hellish fate.  As she walked to home, she thought out a plan to get it over with as quickly as she could, and without too much noise.

But there was the astronomer.  What would he think? Would he have it in him to love a murderer?  No, he was as afraid of Rose as she was. He had said so after she found them in the treehouse.  He would be relieved.

“Sister,” Pearl called as she approached the house, and found Rose sitting outside in the sand.  “Walk with me by the river. We don’t have to talk. I only want to walk with you, like we used to.”

There it was again: the mad, crafty gleam.  Rose didn’t need the bear after all, Pearl realized.

“I will,” Rose said, and went back to looking out at the trees.

That night, as the grey clouds rolled in to cover the stars, they walked, barefoot in the summer grass, by the river that wound along the edge of the forest.  After a while of silence, Pearl, who had been trailing behind Rose under the guise of being a slower walker, reached out and gave her a firm shove with one hand.

Rose tripped forward and fell into the black water without a sound.  She broke the surface, clinging to the muddy bank.

“Lend me your hand,” she cried, “and you can have everything that is mine.  I’ll never speak to him again. Only pull me out and I will do anything you wish.”

“I cannot,” said Pearl, watching Rose’s fingers slip from the bank.  “You plotted to murder me. That I cannot and will not forgive.”

Rose’s last finger, white in the shadows of night, fell from the bank and she disappeared into the river, fighting towards the surface until the life went out of her and she sank silent as a lodestone, tendrils of her red hair floating farther away on the dark water.

Pearl left the bank, feeling no grief, no regret, no guilt.  Only a sort of nothingness, as if she were drowned herself. A lack of feeling.  An emptiness. A feeling of not existing at all. A ghost, existent alone, only to herself.

 

**Author's Note:**

> Comments and constructive criticism are appreciated. Thank you for reading.


End file.
